Saturday, March 08, 2014

Yikes!

Thanks to the video here, I went to look up the ocean sunfish, or mola, here. That's where I learned that the cartoonishly-harmless-looking-yet-Mini-Cooper-sized sunfish has long, clawlike pharyngeal teeth back in its throat, which are nothing compared to what a moray eel keeps back there.

I rather expect Geiger-esque oceanic fauna to come visiting after lights out tonight..

Reading the part about how they get cleaner fish and birds to rid them of parasites, I had this vision of a deleted scene in The Little Mermaid where one of 'em sidles up to a seagull and goes, "Hey! Buddy! Little help here?".

When I had my lobster boat, we used to call them the Mongoloid fish. My old hometown in MA had a harbormaster that was famous for responding to a 'shark' siting by shooting his .38, reloading and shooting the shark again as it sat under the surface. My friends and I dragged a 2000+lb dead mola mola ashore a few days later. Died of acute lead poisoning. 12 .38 slugs got dug out of the poor toothless booger.